The number of single-teacher schools in the country has fallen by around 7000 in 2023-24 compared to the previous year, data from the latest Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) report shows.
While there were 1,18,190 schools with single teachers in 2022-23, this number dropped to 1,10,971 in 2023-24, which is a drop of 7219 schools, the data shows.
Among the States, Madhya Pradesh has the highest number of schools with single teachers — 13,198 — followed by Andhra Pradesh with 12,611 single-teacher schools.
Enrollment in single-teacher schools is, however, down from around 47.43 lakh students in 2022-23 to 39.94 lakh in 2023-24.
Meanwhile, the number of schools with zero enrollments has seen an uptick in 2023-24 compared to the previous year.
Data for 2023-24 shows that there were 12,954 schools in the country with zero enrollments. This is up from 10,294 schools with zero enrollments in 2022-23, which is an increase of 2,660 schools. West Bengal has the largest number of schools with zero enrollments (3254), followed by Rajasthan (2167), and Telangana (2097).
On the rise in the number of schools with zero enrollments, an official in the Ministry of Education said: “In these schools, there may be no students. But in the States, teacher posts are sanctioned in these schools. Students may have stopped coming because the last batch of children in the school has completed school already. It could be that in the next year, more students might get enrolled. The State governments are saying that they are waiting for a year…if there is no enrollment even then, they will close the school. Otherwise, students who may have been able to enroll in the school will lose access to it.”
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